XPost: la.general, alt.politics.media, rec.arts.tv.comedy.colbert-report   
   XPost: dc.politics   
   From: all.democrat.nambla.perverts@disney.com   
      
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   In February, a month before his 55th birthday, Timothy Dean took   
   the plunge into a rooftop pool in West Hollywood. It was a   
   baptism at middle age for a man who was open and proud about his   
   life’s roundabout journey.   
      
   “I will never have everything all figured out at once,” Dean   
   wrote at the time, “but I have enough sorted out now that I can   
   honestly say I’m happy, healthy & centered in my life.”   
      
   Dean’s life was cut short earlier this week. Authorities were   
   called early Monday to the West Hollywood apartment of   
   Democratic activist and donor Ed Buck and found Dean unconscious   
   and not breathing. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.   
      
   The cause of Dean’s death has not been released. But Buck’s   
   attorney, Seymour Amster, stated it was an apparent overdose   
   after Dean ingested a substance at another location and “came   
   over intoxicated.”   
      
   In the days since, the circumstances of Dean’s death have   
   prompted a homicide investigation by the Los Angeles County   
   Sheriff’s Department and become a subject of national interest.   
   He is the second black man to die in Buck’s Laurel Avenue   
   residence — a fact that has stoked outrage and suspicion among   
   activists and community members.   
      
   In July 2017, Gemmel Moore, 26, died of a methamphetamine   
   overdose in Buck’s apartment, which was littered with drug   
   paraphernalia, according to a Los Angeles County coroner’s   
   report. Buck, 64, was investigated in the death, and prosecutors   
   last summer declined to file charges.   
      
   As part of the investigation into Dean’s death, detectives have   
   said they are giving Moore’s case another review.   
      
   For Dean’s friends, the painful jolt of his death has been   
   compounded by what they view as a false caricature of their   
   friend played out in the media, with accusations of drug use and   
   conjecture about his adult film roles that misconstrue the man   
   he had become in recent years.   
      
   “He wasn’t an angel, he wasn’t a devil. He was in between, like   
   everyone else,” said Mark Chambers, who said he met Dean in 1991   
   through Lambda Basketball League, a gay men’s basketball group.   
      
   Chambers, 54, said he knew Dean as a caring and outgoing friend   
   who preferred to call on holidays and birthdays, not text, and   
   showed up in person when someone was in need.   
      
   “Tim was not reserved. Being a 6-foot-5 black man, you have to   
   learn how to make people comfortable quick,” Chambers said.   
   “He’d smile, he’d laugh. Tim put you at ease.”   
      
   Dean worked as a fashion consultant at Saks Fifth Avenue, and   
   previously, at Bloomingdale’s in Century City, Chambers said. As   
   befit his job, he had a dapper fashion sense: well-fitting   
   suits, stylish glasses and a collection of bow ties. He also   
   helped dress Chambers and his husband in Armani suits for their   
   2015 wedding in Long Beach.   
      
   He wasn’t an angel, he wasn’t a devil. He was in between, like   
   everyone else.   
   MARK CHAMBERS, FRIEND   
   For years, he played in the Lambda Basketball League, and this   
   summer, traveled with Chambers and others to Paris to compete in   
   the Gay Games. Dean was mostly a power forward, with “an   
   aggressive, attacker kind of style” on the court, Chambers said.   
      
   His initials, T.M.D., became his nickname. Chambers said it was   
   for “too much drama,” because “he was very dramatic on the   
   court.” Each year, teammates gave him the “most dramatic award,”   
   while others received lauds for “butchest player” or “best   
   defense.”   
      
   “It was a term of endearment,” Chambers said. “He knew, and he   
   took it well.”   
      
   Dean grew up in Florida and lived for decades in the same two-   
   bedroom apartment in West Hollywood. Charlie Sanders, 34, lived   
   a few blocks away and said while jogging each morning, he saw   
   Dean leaving for work.   
      
   “He was the nicest person,” Sanders said. The pair also played   
   in the same basketball league in L.A. and traveled to Paris for   
   the Gay Games this summer.   
      
   “You mention his name, and even if you didn’t spend time with   
   him, you knew who he was and knew him from his smile.”   
      
   For the last three years, Dean had allowed Ottavio Taddei to   
   live in his spare bedroom while Taddei, a native of Italy,   
   worked as an actor and dancer.   
      
   Taddei said that as roommates they couldn’t have been more   
   different — separated in age by 20 years and having a different   
      
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